


Acosmist

by Luna_May



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers Family, Cat Puns, Domestic Avengers, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Hurt!characters, Hydra (Marvel), I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I know, M/M, Marvel Universe, Mutants, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Acceptance, Superhero OC, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Torture, Vaguely crack, Whump, dad tony stark, lots of swearing, powers, self-aware, she knows too, so many fucking jokes, torture aftermath
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 22:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20104567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna_May/pseuds/Luna_May
Summary: the sound of footsteps was getting closer and she was getting more and more nervous as she kept looking at clothes, instead she moved around the racks of clothes, trying to get hidden in the store. She felt like she was in danger, she was in danger. She was in danger. She was, okay, breath, chill out. She chastised herself, trying to relax, she was doing her best.Just clothes shopping, no one dies clothes shopping.So, she wasn’t going to die!Simple.There’s a hand covering her mouth.Fuck.-----------------Beryl G. Washington, mutant, 25, recently fired and lest we ever forget,mental unstable.See, when HYDRA puts you through three years of hell only to be rescued by a bunch of colorful superheroes, you maybe begin to doubt your reality.At some point, though, you learn to roll with it.It's better than what's waiting for you when you wake up, anyway.





	Acosmist

**Author's Note:**

> acosmist. Noun. (plural acosmists) One who denies the existence of the universe, or of a universe as distinct from God.

If there was one thing Beryl hated in her life, it was shopping.   
Mostly because of the fact that she could never buy any nice clothes that fit her properly because of the fact that she had both paws, tail, and cat ears that she tended to cover up with hoodies, baggy pants and boots.   
Not many stores catered to those who were affected by the X-Gene. It was a little rude, in her opinion. She wanted some nice clothes for once and was tired of wearing hoodies and headbands to hide her ears.  
She was also unemployed because she got fired for ‘indecency’ at her last job. All she did was take off her headband and let her ears show because they hurt from being pressed down all day.   
Seriously.   
Combing through the novelty tee-shirts, she was trying to figure out how much she could afford, maybe a shirt and a pair of jeans?   
That could be it.   
Perusing through the aisles she felt the fur on her tail prickle and raise with alarm as she could hear someone moving near her. Her light paw-feet, she rarely knew what to call her feet? They were just fuzzy and cat shaped, but they were normal feet until she was about thirteen. Her traumatic event that pushed her into being affected by the X-Gene, was puberty.   
Stressful, right?   
Well, it wasn’t very dramatic and she was fine with it.   
Still the sound of footsteps was getting closer and she was getting more and more nervous as she kept looking at clothes, instead she moved around the racks of clothes, trying to get hidden in the store. She felt like she was in danger, she was in danger. She was in danger. She was, okay, breath, chill out. She chastised herself, trying to relax, she was doing her best.   
Just clothes shopping, no one dies clothes shopping.   
So, she wasn’t going to die!  
Simple.  
There’s a hand covering her mouth.  
Fuck.

Beryl wished she could have said it was a long fight, but this isn’t the movies, she was quickly dragged back out of the store, her fighting doing nothing and no one attempting to intervene, she could have sworn the place was deserted, all except for one flash of a camera as she was pulled swiftly from the stores back doors. She could only pray that the camera flash was directed at her. For the first time she wished that she was the center of attention, because this is not how she wanted to die.  
She swung her elbow around behind her, making contact with a hard vest of some sort, and she tried to drop all of her weight to the ground or bite this kidnapper’s hand, anything to not get put into a car that would take her to the second location. She knew that the odds of surviving at the second location was always so much smaller, she just had to keep fighting.   
Keep fighting.

Well that plan fucking failed.  
She woke up with a pounding headache, flashes of memories flooding behind her still closed eyes. She remembered fighting in a parking lot, then there was a car? She was shoved into it and then . . .   
Nothing.   
Still, her head was killing her and she groaned, leaning forward, eyes opening slowly, before a harsh light shone painfully towards her face. She hissed wincing and leaning, trying to block the light with a hand, until she realized something was in her arm.   
Her gaze trailed down her shoulder, bruises already forming in a purple-blue mix of discomfort in the tell-tale form of a person’s fingers. Past them she could see an IV was placed into the crease of her elbow, ow. The sight of the needle inside her arm made her feel nauseous, the simple look of a bag of blood hung up carefully on one of those hospital-IV-pole-things could be an explanation for the nausea, but Beryl knows that’s not the truth. For her entire life the idea of being poked with a needle, vaccine or otherwise, made her anxious.   
Eh, no one’s perfect.  
Most people don’t have their blood in a bag hanging above them, well, is it her blood? She was going to assume so, rather than getting someone else’s blood shoved into her veins without her consent.   
All of this is without her consent, she could sue, she could also die right now, she should focus on that.   
What is this? Shock? Yeah, probably.   
The shock lasted for about five minutes, where she had observed her surroundings as best she could under the harsh light. She was inside this glass cage, a gray perimeter that she could only assume was some type of iron or fancy metal considering the effort put into everything else. Inside the cage was this loop sticking out of one of the walls, a toilet, rudely out in the open, and a blanket.   
That’s it.   
Outside the cage were cameras, again why the open toilet? Then some chairs, and odd tables with trays near them. She could only assume what their function was.   
Then the shock wore off and her brain started to stutter, her arm was burning with the needle, her heart was beating frantically and she wanted to go back home, she wanted to be anywhere other than this hellscape, this torture chamber, this laboratory! She was in the second location, this is how she died, obviously, she was going to die here. She didn’t want to die, she had barely lived yet, barely done anything of note, of worth, she was just trying to buy a goddamned shirt! Why was she here!? Why was she- she wasn’t a bad person, right? She wasn’t mean to others, she gave to charities occasionally, she had one or two parking tickets, but that’s it! She didn’t deserve whatever torture she was about to go through!  
What about her dad? He was all alone without her! He would come home from work today and wait for her, maybe he would cook them dinner, maybe he would want to shit-talk his asshole ex, Mark, with her, maybe he would ask her about her day, maybe he would be goofy and give her cat-food instead of dinner and then pull out the real meal after she protested good-naturedly.   
But she wasn’t going to be home.  
Maybe he would call the police? Maybe he would sit in her room, maybe he would drink, maybe he would put up missing posters because no one seems to look for mutants. Maybe he was dead by now.   
It took what felt like three hours for someone to come and see the partially-feline woman who was stuck in the glass cage.   
A woman with a well-fitted lab coat and tight high bun walked into the room. Her expression serious as she examined the girl currently sitting on the floor, tail fluffed up and eyes still squinting against the harsh lights. On the lab coat was an odd symbol, like a skull with tentacles. She could scarcely put her finger on what it was, but it had been a long time since her last history class and she hadn’t been the best student.   
Then it hit her.  
Literally, something hit her upside the head, at least, it felt like it.   
She was on ground, hand clutching her head, groans of pain echoing from her, the thing is when she touched her head, she felt a slight raised metal attached like a tick to the space right behind her ear where the pain radiated from the worst. He touched it and was rewarded with another rush of agony earning a scream that echoed around the cage.   
The lady in the lab coat appeared pleased once Beryl could open her eyes again and left.   
“What the fuck?” 

At some point her clothes had been switched for a pair of sweat-shorts and a tank top and the air conditioning had been turned down severely, leading to a freezing Beryl curling her tail around her legs and toes in an effort to not lose them to frostbite.   
Then after a failed escape attempt, she learned what the loop on the wall was for, a heavy collar was placed around her neck, tight and digging into her skin, just enough to be unpleasant, but not enough to break the skin immediately. Her hands were tied together using the same material and they were all chained to the loop on the wall. How she was supposed to feed herself was beyond her imagination. Well, they switched her to IV fluids and feeding soon after.   
She never found out what they did with her blood.  
Nothing very interesting in there besides the X-Gene.   
This pattern of slowly depleting freedoms, basic nutrition, and tests was what made up the next three years of her life.  
Constantly on edge, wondering when the next pain would come, either from that implant on the side of her head, or from whatever test they ran, or whatever thing they decided they needed from her body. She was stuck, she was going to be there forever, the years had already proven that, her ribs had been broken and poorly healed. Her leg was fractured twice, and broken completely once, but it had been so recent she doubted that it was going to heal properly or soon.   
She was going to be stuck like this for the rest of her life. She was doomed. 

That’s what she believed until a loud crash sounded from a hall outside the cage. The malnourished cat-girl had scrambled up until she was pressed against the wall next to her blanket, the only source of comfort she had had in the last few years. She could only believe that this was another test, what? Someone comes to save her and if she goes with them, what, she gets punished? Is this a test of will? Obedience? Fear? Loyalty? Endurance? She didn’t have a lot of time to ponder this before someone was thrown through the metal door that led to the room with her cage. She watched with wide horror and hope filled eyes as the red and gold suit of a familiar superhero filled the doorway, arm raised and the doctor she had first seen was laying in a trembling heap across from her.  
She shivered and stared up at the figure in front of her, she pressed even harder against the wall of the cage, her thoughts filled with fear and doubt, the phrase ‘This isn’t real’ flying around repeatedly. ‘This isn’t real’.   
As the figure approached the cage, speaking rapid assurances that she was safe and quickly breaking the lock she still couldn’t imagine this was real. So, obviously it wasn’t. This was fake, an illusion or something!   
As Ironman, Tony Stark, gently broke the chains holding her to the wall, and spoke to someone she couldn’t see, asking for vitals and to tell the others that he ‘had a live one’, Beryl was still frozen in fear, cat ears pinned back against her head, and her tail fluffed out. Her broken leg was sticking out in front of her, a slightly raised bump along where the bone should have been placed showing off how close it had been to breaking the surface of her skin.  
With muffled swears she was picked up gently by the robotic man.  
The next few minutes were a blur.  
Then the next few hours.  
Then the next few days.   
She was safe.  
She was free.  
She knew this was too good to be true.   
She knew this was fake. 

Beryl G. Washington woke up.  
That was the first surprise, the waking up, and oddly, she was warm. Warm for the first time in years. She wasn’t boiling hot from when they scalded her paw-feet-things trying to see what would happen, or when they burned her side when she had tried to run once . . . then more when she ran the second time. Her head wasn’t even aching from the implant.   
She was aware of her surroundings, roughly, her eyes were still closed and she did her best to make her ears remain relaxed instead of pricked at attention, seeking any audio stimuli. Well, there was a steady beeping of a heart monitor, and the feeling of something buried in her hand of all places.  
“. . . casualties? . . . Just her . . . HYDRA . . .” muffled words filtered in through what she was assuming was a wall a couple of feet away.   
The benefits of being tested on by an evil organization is that you get to know your skills and body very well over time.   
So, when she opened her eyes and saw that no one was watching her, she took the opportunity to attempt her escape from whatever test this was.   
She was thin now, much thinner than before everything happened, a brief thought of her father runs through her mind, she wondered if he had found a husband by now, or if he was still single, or if he was missing her, maybe he wasn’t even alive?   
Three years . . . she was gone for three years.  
The brief hesitation had made her, she wasn’t going anywhere today apparently. She could hear muffled swears as she was hidden beside the bed, the comforter barely moved as she just slid up and out of it before ending up on the floor thinking about her dad.   
Her dad was all alone without her.   
She winced as she heard a door hiss open and someone familiar call out, “Beryl?”   
The girl in question was currently ripping out the IV from her hand, and biting back a cry of pain at it. She had experienced much worse, the scars along her body showed that much, but needles man . . . they always get her. With only some minor bleeding from the messy removal she cradled her hand close to her chest, ears pinned against her head as she avoided being spotted by whomever was trying to kill her this time.   
Good god, that shouldn’t have been something that didn’t surprise her.   
She wanted to jump out the window, maybe then she could use her claws, yeah those only came out when the scientists did something with electricity and her brain . . . anyway she had claws now, to latch onto the side of the building, just to get safe.   
“Hey, Kit-Kat, where’d you go?”   
‘Kit-Kat? Like the candy? That’s dumb.’ She thought, not wholly dissatisfied at the humorous nickname. She hadn’t had any people so enthusiastic around her in a while, even if she was in captivity. She couldn’t find a way out of the room, not without exposing herself to whoever was trying to lure her out of her spot. She had to act quickly, but, oh no, maybe the IV was important. Her head was spinning and her leg aching, oh yeah, it was broken. When she wasn’t being pumped full of drug’s she could actually notice the cast around the mangled limb.   
She let out a low hiss of pain, and that gave away her position.   
“Oh shit, hey,” the voice called out from just above her and Beryl did the first thing she could think of.  
She punched his nose.  
Good job, Beryl, you committed assault.  
“Wow, Shit!” The voice called out, apparently that was their favorite word as they leaned back on the bed holding the bridge of their nose and swearing some more as Beryl leapt to her feet-paws before immediately falling down again.  
Broken leg, remember?  
Cause she didn’t.   
She had caught a brief glimpse at a group of people she had only vaguely recognized from TV and one odd attack from some villain in her neighborhood. Captain goddamned America, Hawkeye, Black Widow and as far as she could tell from her old science class, Bruce Banner.   
She liked science, not history.  
Science has controlled explosions, history has genocide.  
She was backed against a wall, leg poking out with a heavy white cast and she was wearing underwear and a hospital gown, everything was so much cleaner than it was before, there was so much going on, it was so bizarre, this wasn’t the type of fantasy she had dealt with before, where everyone she loved . . . her dad really, was dead, or she was a soldier for them, killing others.   
She didn’t like that idea. Hurting people, it wasn’t right.   
However, she did just punch who she was now realizing was Tony Stark in the nose.  
Great.  
Now the panic was setting in, her fear of being punished, being hurt, tortured again was sending her heartbeat into overdrive, her breath hitching as she watched the group of superheroes in front of her, they weren’t real.  
They weren’t real, they couldn’t be, this had to be fake, she had to be stuck there still, this was another test, a test to do what?! She didn’t know, she didn’t understand! She was going to die there, going to die in captivity like a zoo animal.  
She was dead, she was dreaming, this was a dream . . . a hyper-realistic dream, but a dream, probably caused by HYDRA, probably.   
Then there was a hand on her shoulder, a calloused hand that smelled vaguely like whiskey and oil, warmth was radiating off of it.   
She looked up through suddenly wet and teary eyes.   
Tony Stark stared down at her, a hard expression in his eyes but the twitch of a smile tugging at his lips. “You’re not gonna punch me again, right?”

Over the next hour a few things became clear.   
For one, the implant was still firmly in place.   
“It’s been connected to your brain,” they had explained in a dumbed down version of the truth for her. “At this point removing it would be far deadlier than leaving it in, so we just modified it so it can’t cause you pain anymore.”   
She appreciated that, and was not in a hurry to find out if that was the truth or not, but since it was still there, she doubted that this was real, again, if she still had the implant maybe that was how they were making her see this? Maybe they were going to get her to soften up, and then pull her back out, or make her suffer in this world and leave her to rot and die a slow death in the real one.   
“Hey, Beryl, you still with us?” A hand was on her shoulder again and she jumped back to reality, apparently, she had drifted off.   
“Y-yeah,” She responded hesitantly, her once again IV-ed hand finding itself touching the cool metal circle that was dug firmly behind her ear, she instinctively flinched waiting for something to hurt her, be it a hot iron poke from a guard, or a jolt of pain from the implant itself. She was so tired, maybe it was the drugs taking effect. 

The second thing that became clear was that Tony Stark wasn’t one to be denied.   
“You got a place to sleep, Kiddo?” He had asked a few days after she first woke up in a room in the Avengers Tower. Her hair was just washed and still much to long for her liking, she needed to change it.   
Something, no everything, had to change before she felt like maybe this world, even if it was fake, could be a nice one.   
“No, sir, I don’t,” she had answered politely, a part of her still awaiting punishment for saying no to anything, or well, speaking. Her father hadn’t been notified that she was still alive at this point, she still wasn’t sure if he was alive, no one was telling her much of anything right now. She didn’t even want to go home yet. It could put her dad in danger if HYDRA found out where he lived.   
Tony Stark had gone quiet for a moment, still standing in the door-frame of the room she’d been confined too for that past few days. The walls were a rather pale yellow and her bed was white. She knew it was meant to be positive, peppy or something. She didn’t feel peppy, she felt, er, apeppy. Not-peppy. Tony seemed to feel the same as he stared hard at the painting on the wall, a picturesque view of a tree in front of a lake with a boat in it. the boats in the lake, not the tree.  
“Well, how would you feel about staying here?” He finally asked, though, in hindsight it probably wasn’t much of a question and more ‘you’re staying here, okay?’   
“I-I can’t ask you to do that!” she had tried to protest before he cut her off with a ‘bup-bup’.   
“You’re not asking me to do anything, I’m offering you a place to stay until you’re back on your,” he smiled cheekily, “paws.”   
It was at that comment, for some reason, that Beryl’s lips twitched in the faintest memory of a smile for the first time in three years.   
It was decided later that she would take one of the floors used for storage, he was already figuring it out, and ordering furniture before she could protest, only sending back a “Never call me ‘sir’ again!” before disappearing out the door, not even her hearing could pick up his steps after a few moments.  
Guy moved fast.

The other thing that was clear to her was that her world wasn’t real.  
This . . . this place? Avengers Tower? Seeing Captain America eat toast in the morning, standing rigid and at attention all the time, The Black Widow cleaning a gun casually while Hawkeye was messing with some arrows. Tony Stark checking in on her occasionally if she didn’t get out of bed at all for hours on end.   
It was surreal.   
So, it wasn’t real.  
This place, it wasn’t, it was to good to be true. Her body? Real, it felt real, the slowly healing leg was real, the scars were real, the implant firm and constant behind her left ear? Real. But this futuristic place? These superheroes all living like everyone else? This wasn’t real. She was way to well aware of how shitty a fanfiction this already sounded like.   
‘The poor damaged girl is suddenly thrust into a life of adventure and excitement, but oh no, there’s a secret!’ Yeah, fuck that noise, this was fake, it had to be! She wasn’t a protagonist, she wasn’t . . .   
She was just her.  
A terrified girl with a body she never asked for and memories that would never leave.  
So, for now, it was clear she should just go along with this fantasy while it lasted.


End file.
